Pablo Sorozábal(1897 - 1988)

Sorozábals artisan family moved from the Basque countryside to San
Sebastián a few years before Pablos birth on September 18th 1897.
He was something of a child prodigy on piano and violin, earning his living in
cinemas, cafés and fairgrounds, and playing with the San
Sebastián Casino Orchestra under the influential Fernández
Arbós. He always regretted having lost his ability to speak the
Basque language: "because of the pressures of life and a centralised government
policy we were forced to forget our language. I am ashamed of this and still
hope, even if only at the end, to speak my dying words in the same language I
used to express my first feelings¹"

In 1919 he moved to Madrid, joining the Madrid Symphony Orchestra
which performed his Capricho español (1920). His distinctive
musical personality was forged by study in Leipzig; and in Berlin, where he
preferred Friedrick Koch as composition teacher to
Schöenberg, whose theories he disliked. It was in Germany that he
made his conducting debut, and the rostrum remained at the centre of his
working life.

His Leipzig concert works include the choral Suite vasca
(1923); Dos apuntes Vascos (1925) and Symphonic Variations on a
Basque Theme (1927); the Siete
Lieder, 1929 settings of Heine for mezzo-soprano and orchestra, are
perhaps the finest works he produced in Germany. The ballet suite
Victoriana (1951); and the powerful Funeral March Gernika for
chorus and orchestra (1966) date from his later Madrid days. Two short but
powerful compositions for chorus and orchestra, Maite (Our
Lady, from the 1946 film Jai-Alai) and ¡Ay, tierra
vasca! (1956) retain their place in the hearts of his countrymen.

Katiuska (1931) was his
extraordinarily assured stage debut. The twenty or so works which followed his
operetta La isla de las perlas and the one-act ópera chica
(opera-zarzuela) Adiós a la
bohemia (both 1933) combine lyric fire and inimitable orchestration
with an unfailing sense of theatre. Best-loved are his classic madrileño
comedy La del manojo de rosas (1934) and
the nautical romance set on the Atlantic Coast La tabernera del puerto of 1936.

Sorozábals liberal sympathies left him somewhat
isolated after the Civil War, and many of his later zarzuelas were first seen
outside the capital or in less prestigious Madrid theatres. They include the
ambitious, allegorical romance Black, el
payaso (1942), the ski-sports musical Don Manolito (1943), La eterna
canción (1945), Los burladores (1948, a version of the Don
Juan story) and Entre Sevilla y
Triana (1950).

His tenure as director of the Madrid Symphony Orchestra ended
abruptly in 1952 when he was refused permission to conduct
Shostakovichs Leningrad Symphony; and though his musical
comedy Las de Caín was premiered at the Teatro de la Zarzuela in
1958, the opera Juan José still awaits stage performance after a
production was suspended there during rehearsals in 1979. With his death in
Madrid on 26th December 1988 the last chapter in the creative history of the
romantic zarzuela came to an end.

Sorozábal remains the most controversial of the great
zarzuela composers, adored by many aficionados but leaving others cold.
Although his style is eclectic, exhibiting a range of influences from Debussy
and Puccini through to Kalman, Gershwin and the Hollywood musical, the fusion
of these disparate musical elements is very much his own. The acerbic bite and
almost shocking pugnacity of his best work can justly be compared to Kurt
Weills in Germany, but Sorozábals theatrical vitality and
musical wit are second to none.